Love and Other Battles on Rainbow Road
by Kristi
Summary: Arthur's met the girl of his dreams, but all lovers come with a past. "Every fairy tale has a baddie at the beginning." A kink meme response. Arthur/OFC. CABIN PRESSURE


Love and Other Battles on Rainbow Road

"Arthur. Please. I don't need any more sorries."

Madeline tossed her hairbrush into her open case. Arthur stood by his dresser, hands uselessly at his sides.

"Did you think my whole life before you was some wonderful, cartoon wonderland?" she said.

Five minutes ago, the world had been a fuzzy place that included nothing more than the rumpled sheets and the couple rumpling them on Arthur's bed. Three minutes ago, Madeline pulled back and whispered four scary little words: 'we need to talk'. Thirty seconds from now, Arthur didn't think he'd have a girlfriend anymore. She sat cross-legged in his lime beanbag chair, packing her case. It was only nine thirty on Friday night, the same day she arrived from London.

"I'm sorry - no, I'm not sorry? Except I am. . . . It's awful." He could feel his heart beat in his finger that wound itself in a loop on his cargo shorts.

He felt strange and sad; he'd never had this kind of conversation with a girl before. Madeline was normally so sweet and easy, like all his other girlfriends. He sat on the edge of his bed and rested his chin on his folded arms on the footboard.

"I don't know why you're angry with me but if you tell me what I did wrong, I'll stop doing it," Arthur said.

The zipping of the bag sounded like nothingness under the bright, white overhead bulb.

She said, "You just want me to stop being crazy so we can have sex."

The edges of Arthur's vision blurred. He pushed up off the bed. He closed his laptop and put it on the desk. He wound the cords around his wrist and put them in the drawer. He pushed in his chair. Madeline was a kneeling, skirted figurine on the floor. He pulled the chair out again, and sat in it. He crossed his legs and folded his hands on his lap and stared at the green curtains drawn over the window.

Behind him, he heard Madeline pick up her bag and move to the door. The catch snicked in the latch.

"Aren't you going to say something?" she said.

"I can't seem to say anything right." His own tone surprised him.

She opened the door. She didn't close it with a bang. She wouldn't wake his mum, no matter what she felt. The emptiness in the room swelled up like a balloon stretched too tight. Arthur reached across the desk for the paper monsters taped to the lava lamp. The brown-eyed one she'd drawn as him, eating the blue-eyed one's dangling eyeball. That had been a fun date.

Madeline was lovely, bright, long legged, with black hair framing a heart-shaped face, sharp eyes and a rosebud mouth. She wore dresses with leggings, carried the whole world in her print handbags, and stuck sketch pens in her hair and then complained she lost them. When her company flew MJN so many months ago, Douglas said she looked like she got dressed by signing cartoon woodland creatures. He almost didn't recognize her tonight, after the things she told him . . . had to tell him, of course she had. . . . _All fairy tales have a baddie at the beginning_, he thought.

They met on GERT-I when Madeline and a bunch of guys she worked with flew to New York City for one of those money-asking telly programs. They were flying Captain Kazoo - _the_ Captain Kazoo! Only, not just him - Madeline was assistant to the program director to the BBC's whole children's programming department, which was sort of like being a kindygarten teacher except without the icky runny noses or crying screaming tantrum part. Unless Kazoo was drinking. Only, Arthur found out that Madeline did a lot of the things that Arthur did, like getting coffee and fetching other people's belongings.

He smiled when he thought back now that he didn't notice Madeline noticing _him_ until she popped up at the door to his galley while he was hiding from the passengers who were talking very loudly about the places they wanted to go in New York after the money-asking show. They didn't sound like the kind of bars Madeline or any other woman would want to go to, aside from the women who were paid to be there.

"Oh. Hi," Arthur had said, surprised at the attractive woman suddenly in his way, not that she was a problem. "If there's something ourselves can get yourselves, ourselves would be pleased to fetch it, if yourselves would be pleased to remain in the designated passenger-only areas. Which isn't here. Sorry."

Madeline smiled and he noticed her eyes were the same blue as the sky over Greece that day in June when he found the perfect conch shell and everything smelled really good.

Arthur remembered he had a point, but it didn't seem very important anymore.

"I'm sorry," she said. "It's - this trip is sort of horrible beyond the telling of it? I came up here to hide. If that's okay?"

"Oh! Sorry to hear that."

So he made her a cup of tea and she thanked him five times for letting her sit in the little jump seat across from the galley while he pretended to clean. She did that girly thing where they look up at you from behind the mug and all you can see is enormous eyes and fringe. Ever since Ariel and Belle, hair in eyes really did Arthur in.

He asked her why she wasn't happy today. That turned out to be a good question.

As she wrapped her hands around the tan mug, he noticed her baby blue nail varnish. On the left thumb, a Pikachu saucily peeked at him. "I like my job, but the guys who are important enough to fly to American cities? Aren't the ones who care to remember my name for five minutes."

"That can be difficult after I've brought them two or five scotch on rocks," Arthur observed.

She wrinkled her nose. "It can be 'difficult' when they think it's the Sixties and I'm their girl Friday. Do you know that most of the stuff in _Mad Men_ is based on modern anecdotes?"

Arthur almost said something stupid like 'Why are they mad?' but checked his clottedness before it ruined a perfectly good date-making.

"Well, I guess I'm lucky," he said.

"Oh?"

Arthur sat in the jump seat opposite her. Their knees kissed when Skip hit a turbulence. "Oh, yeah, MJN is brilliant. My mum owns the plane and the pilots are my best friends. I wouldn't want to be anywhere else."

"Did you always want to be a steward?"

"No," Arthur said, "but I always wanted to fly. So I guess it all worked out the way it was supposed to."

"That's nice." Madeline squeezed his wrist. Warmth from her mug seeped into his skin. "I admire you. It's good to hear someone feel confident about their life like that. That's a gift."

Arthur couldn't remember the last person who 'admired' him. He didn't know what to think of this Madeline, with a sad smile.

They talked. The trip seemed to take only half an hour instead of four. He did the minimal stewarding imaginable. He didn't even linger in the flight deck when he brought Skip and Douglas their coffee, but he felt oddly reluctant to tell them what he was up to in the galley. After all, there was nothing to tell, except that Madeline was doing things to his mind that he didn't understand, not yet. Arthur had never found it _difficult_ to talk to women, but even that first time with Madeline felt more right than any conversation with a girl he'd ever had.

At the end of the flight, he reluctantly walked her back to her seat for landing. She handed him her card. In purple ink, she'd printed another number and a little smiley on the back.

"I live in London," she said. "Do you . . . ?"

"Fitton," Arthur said, "but my car can probably make it. If not, I can borrow M - someone's. If she lets me. Or there's the train. Or, sometimes we fly into London for really rich or lazy passengers, that would be brilliant. Or maybe -"

"Arthur," she said. "Just call me?"

Her hand covered his where it squeezed the upholstery on the seatback. Someone's seatback. He didn't even care that it wasn't in the upright position for landing.

"Yeah, all right," he said.

"You will?" She clamped her lower lip between her teeth so that the strawberry pink went white.

He did.

#

Arthur closed his bedroom door behind him and stepped into the dark, cool hall. His bare feet found the pock marks left by Madeline's heels in the familiar, blush carpet.

His room was on the north side, over the garage, at the top of a curving staircase and down a long hall. If he opened the door a crack in the dead of night, the echoes carried from the main hall. He could hear feet on the travertine and both the main or servant's entrance open or close. Voices on echoed down the long, empty halls. The creeky stair in the back staircase went up like a shot, but he knew Mum wouldn't hear it from her west bedroom.

He stepped over Madeline's bag in the dining room. She didn't look up when he pushed open the kitchen door. She sat on a kitchen stool, looking at her phone in her hand. Their night's dishes stood in the draining rack. Her jacket lay draped over the kitchen island. He hesitated, afraid she didn't want to talk to him, but so worried it was almost worth saying something stupid.

"I'm sorry." She pocketed her phone.

"It's okay." He closed the door behind him.

"I get so angry sometimes." She had her not-crying voice. "I've driven so many people away. I can be sweetness one moment and completely selfish another and I _always _regret it, sometimes even when I'm saying it, and I'm watching the argument rise up like a monster that takes over my body."

Arthur stepped closer, cautiously. He so wanted to touch her. "It's okay."

"No, it's not! I'm horrible, why are you . . . ?" She flipped her hair. "I'm so horrible."

He took her hand, hesitantly, and gave a playful little tug. She slid to her feet, let him hold her. She was shaking.

"You didn't mean it," he said.

"I shouldn't have told you," she said. "We should have just had sex -"

He shushed her. That was just silly. He rubbed her back, kissed the top of her head, asked little questions that amounted to 'I care for you, are you okay?' She gave a little nod. He shouldered her bag for her as they went back upstairs.

In his room, Madeline took out her happy sushi pj bottoms and that brown jumper he'd been looking for, and excused herself to change down the hall. While she was out, he changed into jammies too and sat on the bed to wait. When she came back, her hair was up and she'd washed off her makeup. She tucked away her toothbrush and things, and he wanted to tell her she could leave some things in the drawer in the loo, but was that too couply? Was four months the toothbrush month? But there were more important questions to ask.

He said, "Do you usually tell people that your father molested you before you go to bed with them?"

"No?" Madeline arranged her long limbs in one of her yoga-inspired poses. "My therapist says I should. I told my girlfriend."

Arthur nodded. Madeline had had a relationship with a woman some time in her not-so-distant past. He didn't even know her name.

"What did she say?" Arthur asked, for reconnaissance purposes.

Madeline shrugged. "She was . . . good about it. I learned a lot from her about my sexuality in general. I gained a lot of confidence, you know?"

Arthur had no idea what that meant, but he was glad Madeline felt okay about sex and her body now. He liked sex, didn't understand why anyone wouldn't, unless something horrible had happened to them. His stomach went all twisty when he realized the whole of the situation: that his girlfriend had a terrible past, and did indeed have feelings about sex, and there was nothing he could do about it to take them away.

"So, um, are you okay with this?" Madeline asked.

"Um? I dunno, really. Doesn't seem like there's much I can do."

Madeline stood like a ballet dancer going onto her toes and crawled into his lap. He put his arms around her reflexively. She felt wiry, taut, like she'd been exercising. "Well, good," she said. "Then I guess we can get back to business."

Arthur pulled back. "I - are you sure?"

"Isn't that why I came for the whole weekend?"

Arthur dodged her kiss, hid his face in her shoulder, breathing the clean, shampoo-y scent of her hair. His head reeled with the stories she rattled off to him as factually as Skip telling ATC the flight plan. Six years of her father coming into her bedroom at night; a decade of boyfriends who didn't know 'no' from 'yes'. Sex was supposed to be _fun_.

"We could do something else," Arthur said.

"Like what?" she said.

"I - I don't know. _Mario Kart_?"

"Oh," she said. "Something like that. Um, okay. If you really want to?"

He did. She wriggled off his lap. As he fed disc into the Wii and figured out which controllers were charged, he felt her bare toes touch the back of his foot. He turned on the green shag sofa.

"Are we all right?" she asked him.

"Aren't we?" he said.

She dug her thumbnail into the controller's home button. "Yeah. Sure."

She wound her arms around his neck and kissed him. He liked how his old, fuzzy jumper felt on her soft, slender frame. He squeezed her knee in its flannel, where a field of crazy-eyed sashimi danced with _mille _joyful dragon rolls.

"These are cute," he said.

She giggled. "I know, right? They make me happy. My mum threatened to burn them when I lived with her, along with my big bollocked raccoon tee from Japan."

"Who doesn't love a big bollocked Japanese raccoon?"

They picked their avatars and compromised over the course. _Mario Kart_ was Arthur's favorite since high school, when he and his best mates tourneyed on the Nintendo 64. His mum sort of hated the game because he sometimes shouted things like '_Sodding cows!_' at a wall-rattling volume. His heart had leapt when he learned Madeline hated the cows, too, the big stupid weapon-thieving clots.

He anxiously revved his Toad-mobile at the start gate and counted the spaces behind her Princess Peach. _Nothing_ was better than _Mario Kart_ at a sleepover. Mads _brilliant _- none of his other girlfriends played, or put up much of a fight.

Lakitu called "_Go_." Big, slow, powerful Donkey Kong (Douglish in the character's power and stubbornness) clipped the side of his cart and promptly flattened him. He flipped his buttons as Toad was reset.

Madeline said, "So . . . was this what you were expecting us to do on our weekend alone together? Were . . . you expecting anything?"

She was staring at the television blankly, and he wondered if he'd imagined what she just said except that his brain couldn't possibly come up with the things she was saying tonight. They really didn't cover this in his reading people course in Ipswitch.

"I don't know," Arthur said as he cruised the mindless first leg of the course. "Isn't it okay that we do what we want, if that's what makes us feel happy and comfortable with each other?"

He slalomed past Donkey Kong with deep personal satisfaction.

"I guess."

Stupid, smug Mario won the race.

They were both woefully behind their respective best scores. Arthur wondered if there was any more of that goopy stuff from GERT-I in the fridge that he wasn't supposed to know about but tasted like melted glory if you microwaved it with marshmallows. As Toad skimmed the tide pools, he watched Peach's cart zoom right past secret pass to the shortcut. Triumphant, he flung his turtle bombs at the door and pressed on to victory.

"I think we should have sex tonight," Madeline said decisively.

Arthur drove his kart into a palm tree. Toad howled like Donkey Kong had clamped his testicles in a vise.

"Pause," Arthur warned.

"Not right now," Madeline said. "I'm in first."

Arthur muted the cheery pause screen and flung his controller onto the sofa behind him. Madeline pulled her knees to her chest, poking her thumbnail into the controller's thick silicone cover. Arthur turned sideways to face her, one stocking foot pulled underneath him. He closed his eyes and thought, really hard, before he spoke.

"Are you all right?" he said.

Madeline flashed big, scared kitty eyes. "I'm fine."

"Because - because the things you're saying sound like you're really not okay, or like you want me to say something I wouldn't say, so you can get mad at me. And I understand that sometimes when people are afraid -"

"Why would I be afraid!"

" - they make up a fight so they don't have to show how scared they are. My mum does that sometimes. Often, actually. And it's not because she's a bad person or that I'm saying you're a bad person, I just know it's really hard to talk about sad things. But I think fighting is just awful. I feel stupid and useless and then I get upset and do something really idiotic. So I'd like it if maybe we could skip that and if you could please tell me what's wrong?"

Madeline squeezed the controller cover. "I don't . . . know if I trust you . . ."

"I'm sorry if I said something or did something or didn't say or do something to make you not trust me."

"Oh, Arthur!" He didn't know why she started crying, now, for the first time tonight. "Usually men just . . . get want what they want, you know? It's sort of easier not to tell them."

"But I'm _asking _you -"

"It's not about you!"

Arthur sighed. This is what Douglas meant about relationships being really hard and women being really frustrating. But Arthur wanted to tell him that he thought, just for himself, it was worth it with the right person.

"I'm sorry I'm totally broken." Madeline didn't sound sorry.

"Are you angry at me, or angry at yourself?" Arthur's heart stopped. He didn't know why he said that. It was sort of really mean.

She closed her eyes; two tears ran down. He felt horrible.

She said, "I'm angry that I started having sex with my father when I was eight. I'm angry my mother didn't believe me when I told her at age eleven. I'm angry I let horrible boys fuck with my head and my body when I was a teenager. I'm angry for every therapist who couldn't help me. I'm angry my older sister keeps begging me to go see him because she says 'he's not like that anymore'. And I'm angry my fucked up life is fucking up something I really want to keep precious and sacred. Because I - I care for you, Arthur. A lot. I'm so lucky."

He tried to pull her close, but she pulled back.

"I care for you too," he said. "It's okay, you know. If you get upset. I get upset about things too. You can tell me anything, I promise to try to help or at least, I dunno, if listening helps then I'm good at that. What happened to you is really terrible and I'm really sorry."

"Thank you," she whispered. "Thank you for believing me."

"Mads - of course I believe you."

She leaned against him then, let him hold her. He realized he needed it probably more than she did. He couldn't help her, couldn't fix this. Could only be the best himself she needed and deserved so maybe someday he could replace all those bad people who had failed her before.

Arthur kissed her on the forehead. "About . . . what we were talking about, um. Don't think I don't want to, because I do, eventually - when we're ready - but I don't think we ought to do anything tonight. In bed, that is. If that's okay with you?"

"It won't - it . . . I don't know," she said. "I don't know what I'm feeling. I don't know if I'm going to freak out if we do it now or later. I'm so sorry, I hate this."

"Can I help?" he said. "I think we need words, you know? Like a red light - green light - yellow light signal. Because I think you've got all these scaredy baddie memories in your head that keep you from wanting to say what you mean. You need a little Lakitu floating over the bed to say when you want to stop, or, when to proceed with caution, or when it's totally brilliant and you want more."

Was this stupid? It was probably stupid. Arthur was already sketching the puppet and his sign and plotting how to suspend him from the ceiling. But what about when they made out in the car?

"That might work . . ." she said.

"Really?"

"It's like . . . a way to be really honest."

"Honesty is good."

"So they say."

They kissed. And talked. And got in bed.

And didn't have sex that night.

#

"You've been lonely, too," she murmured into the pink daybreak as they lay spooned in their jammies under the covers.

"Yeah," Arthur said. He kissed the back of her neck.

He hadn't known how good this could feel, just holding someone, knowing they could tell each other so many good and terrible things.

"Did I do good?" he said

She snuggled against him. The doves in the dogwood beside his window cooed in the cool morning air. He pulled the duvet up over their shoulders.

"Thank you," she said.

He kissed her knuckles, linked their fingers against the warmth of her middle.

He was glad she told him. It felt like quite a heft of manly responsibility to respect her boundaries and be honest about himself as well. To _want_ to know all these things. To date someone with whom he talked about something more intimate than silly, surface things. To care for and protect her and know all the parts of her life, now and before him. To be inside someone's head and soul before he was inside her body.

_Oh_, Arthur thought.

So this . . . is love.


End file.
